


If And When

by Aris



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: ... for some reason it's christmas in the fic, Angst, Bad Days, Christmas, Eating Disorders, M/M, Short One Shot, binge eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 11:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8371084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aris/pseuds/Aris
Summary: ...he has been emptied, scooped out, and what was inside now lies elsewhere, pulsing and bleeding and seeping away into blackness. He flows away with it, piece by piece like ice from a melting glacier.
   Sometimes Patrick has bad days.





	

From the edges of the window frost spirals delicately outwards, reaching across the glass with a distinct longing; intertwining with other, sending out searching tendrils and capturing the intricacy of the snowflake in its wake. Behind the spidersweb of winter, LED lights obscure the blurry window in a fog of merry primary colours. Flashing and blinking and fading out. A bright red to a dull yellow, each tiny line of frost glowing with the absolute magnificence of the light from across the street, thrumming with its fullness.

Where he lays, the light does not reach. Straight lines, he remembers from science lessons all those years ago, light moves in straight lines and he is sunken below the window, caught in a mess of dark blankets and darker thoughts. The glass catches the half-hearted cheer and casts a small glow down to where his legs rest, their paleness tinged with blood red, then a sickly green, a hypothermic blue...

 

He shifts, pulling the covers further up his chest and gazing at the window above, at the shadow of Christmas peeking into his home from below the blind. His lips twitch downwards at the sides. Christmas is fickle thing, coming and going in a week but dragged on and on by adverts and radio shows and the small smiles of children as they play with their new toys and ignore those without. It does not mean anything.

It is a mere distraction.

But still, the impossible emptiness pulls heavily at his insides, a weight skimming down the sides of his stomach and leaving an abyss in its awake, into which a feeling of impending... something falls. An expectation of the worse. A hunger.

Patrick rolls onto his side, back turned to the faint lights and stares at the door to his bedroom. The movement was sudden and his heart beats loudly in his left ear, filling his head with a dull throbbing that momentarily distracts from the nothing inside. He squeezes shut his eyes, but it does nothing to help the twisting feel within, the barren space. He has been emptied, scooped out, and what was inside now lies elsewhere, pulsing and bleeding and seeping away into blackness. He flows away with it, piece by piece like ice from a melting glacier. He slips down and down and down and where the ocean should lie, there is a curiosity, and a fear he cannot bear to address.

Anguished, he brings his hand to his stomach and grabs at it, digging nails into pliable flesh. There's something there, under that skin - he feels it between his fingers. Greedy and malleable and horribly vulnerable - a softness that tells him it cannot be real, this ache.

He is not hungry. He is not.

 _Mind over matter_ , his grandma always told him, but he still sits up. The covers drag with him and he pulls them up from the bunch around his legs, wrapping a side around his shoulders and forcing his body to sway upwards. The illumination catches on his pale neck for a moment before he wrenches his gaze from the floor and shifts the sheets to cover his protruding stomach.

"Fuck," he grates out

 _Mind over matter,_ his grandma always told him, and he's still going to binge like the pig he knows he is. The floor of the kitchen is linoleum faux tile, off-white and a fresh coldness against his bare feet. His skin sticks slightly with every faltering footstep towards -

"Patrick?"

Cold air brushes between his exposed legs and Patrick turns, one hand on the fridge handle and the other half raised, to face the voice. Soft eyes meet Patrick's and he feels distinctly childish, all of a sudden. Wrapped up in blankets in the middle of the night, like a kid sneaking cookies and milk for a midnight feast. He looks back down at his feet, past his elongated belly and away from Pete's eyes.

Shame tangles within in shades of bright red, creeping up his spine and blossoming onto his cheeks like the damaged petals of roses.

"Patrick?" Pete says again. Patrick doesn't respond and he hears the click of the front door as Pete goes to close it and the resulting flush of chilly air runs its fingers across him, epidermis rising to meet it in goosebumps. He drops his hand from the handle, turning completely towards where Pete stands. He sees his boots, black against the linoleum, and thinks of the black of his room. The darkness inside.

"Oh, Patrick," and Pete is there, warmth on rigor mortis, cradling his arm where the covers have wilted against his body - touching, feeling, as if it isn't repulsive. _Patrick, Patrick, Patrick,_ and tears linger on his eyes, refusing to fall but welling together into a blurry wall of salty water. He can't see the fabric of Pete's coat as he encompasses him in his arms, can't see the sheets fall partially from him or Pete's eyes flutter shut in silent hurt.

Patrick hates that all it takes is one glance and Pete just knows.

“Did something happen? Do I need to do something?” He asks earnestly but as a whisper, as if the moment is too precious to break, lips pressed against Patrick’s head, reaching only because Patrick is so ducked down, curled into himself. Pete is chilly, a breath of fresh air that leaves a strange energy lingering in his wake, but where they touch Patrick can feel the brief indicators of warmth come to life like tiny, hesitant LED bulb. It's these sparks that remind him who he is, how he has come to be here in this kitchen of their shared apartment at 1:47am, on the edge of a relapse because there's a chemical imbalance, or a gene, or something else so callously unfair it causes his chest to ache.

He pulls Pete closer, ignores the part of him trying to detach itself from his body, urging him to hide somewhere quiet and lonely where he can pretend he doesn't have a body, hasn't been forced into a form he never agreed to - something broken, pre damaged. Instead, he raises his arms, pulling the sheet up to cover Pete’s shoulders, not daring to look him in the eyes as long as something so dark and insatiable is harbored inside him. He can't let it eat at Pete, too, and he knows Pete would let it, if he asked. 

Patrick shakes his spinning head, tucking it the side of Petes, seeking a sensation that isn't the beckoning hum of the fridge behind him. The temptation of something he doesn't need - not anymore.

“Just... Just stay. Please.”

Pete always does.

**Author's Note:**

> So a long time ago I promised Jimmy I'd write them a fic, and I wrote some of it and couldn't finish it. So here it is, a little ending tacked on this time, I hope you're doing well if you're still somehow reading my fics
> 
> And this is probably the last time I'm posting something for the old emo triad bandoms, I miss churning out ryden fics on livejournal but it's been a real pleasure guys ~


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